During the summer of 2023, Fleur and I traveled to Surinam for two months together. She did a six week internship at the general practitioner as her last internship to finish her medicine study. During those weeks I worked remotely for my clients. The last two weeks we took time to enjoy more of the country.
We stayed at a compound with other people, mostly students, expats and some coming for holiday. We had a nice connection with some of them, with whom we often planned trips during the weekends and go for dinner and drinks in the city.
To be fair, Surinam is not the most convenient country to travel to. It being not very safe and underdeveloped, but the nature, food and nice people make up for that for sure. Especially for a Dutch person, I think it’s a must visit country.
In a world with continuous changing COVID restrictions, our trip to Curaçao felt like a welcome getaway from everyday life. I still feel very privileged we got to do this. Of course living on a tropical island for a month is wonderful, but it’s also always somewhat of a challenge and adventure to find your way and setup daily routines. In the end we’re expected to deliver the same amount of work as we would’ve delivered at home.
Working setup in our apartment
Working at the office
For our stay we booked an AirBnB with car rental included. Our colleague (and director of SIM Caribbean) Wesley, who lives in Curaçao helped us pick a good location and provided us with some do’s and don’ts. Having a car is pretty much mandatory. Bicycles and scooters are rarely seen and thus not much anticipated on in traffic. Using a car is your best pick and besides some poorly maintained roads and the blinding high-beam headlights of other cars very doable. A fun fact: in Curaçao you’ll hear a lot of cars honking to each other. It’s a custom to greet and thank one another, for example when way is given on an intersection.
The time difference with The Netherlands was 6 hours in the first week, when time changed to wintertime it was 5 hours. Curaçao is 5/6 hours behind on The Netherlands, so we always began early in the morning (around 7:00 to 7:30AM). This made us overlap with our team colleagues for like half of the day.
Well earned Friday drinks
At the local snèk “Bugs Bunny”
Wesley invited us to come have a Friday night drink at a local snèk, which is sort of an outside bar. We visited Bugs Bunny snèk, they serve the coldest Amstel Brights on the island with delicious fried chicken wings. I couldn’t imagine a better way to end the work week!
Colourful stairs in Otrabanda
Grote Knip
Tugboat Beach
In our spare time we explored the island; the colourful Otrabanda and Punda, an abundance of beautiful beaches and amazing snorkling along the coast. One other main highlight I would everyone recommend to do is climbing the Christoffelberg. From the parkinglot at the foot of the mountain it takes a fit person around 45-60 minutes to climb up. The hike is fantastic and the view on the top very rewarding! If you manage to start early (start the hike around 6:15/6:30AM) you might find yourself alone at the top which I imagine would’ve been magical!
As pictures speak more than a thousand words, I decided to just create a photo/video compilation and write a little text with it.
Earlier this year I was in Bali for two months, to do a combination of work and travel. In Bali I was together with Sven (my brother) and Fleur (my girlfriend). After my return home, the concept of working remotely stuck with me and I really wanted to do another trip. So I decided to take some action. Destination: Thailand (Bangkok and Chiang Mai). I chose this destination after using the website www.nomadlist.com. It’s a website that shows all places around the world with all sorts of ratings regarding working remotely. Chiang Mai and Bangkok are both high on the overall rating list.
After getting allowance from my employer to go, I planned 1 month Thailand. As I expected.. it a great experience! Chiang Mai and Bangkok were indeed perfect locations to work remotely. I think the ease of living in both places is the thing I enjoyed the most. Nice weather (30C+), great and cheap food all around and very good facilities to work. And outside working hours I could do some tours and get to know Thailand a bit. What more do you want?..
I’m certain this won’t be my last remote work trip. I really like the mix of my life in the Netherlands and these remote work trips for a couple of months a year. Looking forward to the next one already!
Anyway I hope you’ll enjoy the compilation, it’s only 2 minutes as I didn’t take a lot of photos/video’s.
Two days ago I arrived back in the Netherlands. Of course I’m happy to see everyone again, but to be honest.. If I could, I would jump on the plane back to Bali in an instant. But oh well, who wouldn’t?
During the last weeks I was together with Fleur. We made Canggu our home base and from there made trips to the North of Bali, the Islands Nusa Lembongan and Nusa Ceningan and later also the East of Bali.
Nyepi day
The day before I left back to Holland it was Nyepi day. This is Balinese New Year. In advance of Nyepi, there are a lot of ceremonies throughout the island. One of these is Ogoh-Ogoh (the day before Nyepi). The Balinese perform a parade with large self-made devilish looking creatures and afterwards burn them to scare away the bad spirits. After that on Nyepi day, Bali is completely shutdown. Everyone is required to stay inside, no lights are allowed, airport closed and even the internet was closed off for a day. Amazing how something like this is possible in 2019. It is said, the reason for this is to let the bad spirits believe Bali is deserted and no one is living there. The Balinese use Nyepi (aka Day of Silence) to overthink last year and think ahead about next year.
This time I’m not going to write much more than this and let the photos and videos speak. I made a photo/video compilation of the complete trip:
The first three weeks in Bali have literally flown by. Life is good in Bali! Good weather (despite the fact that it’s rain season), delicious food, amazing nature and very friendly people. I’m so happy and thankful that I still have 5 weeks to go here. Last 2 weeks were great, I’ll try to share some of our experiences and add some photos with it.
Canggu got us hooked
After we stayed in Kuta the first week, we went to surfer village Canggu. We were immediately caught by the relaxed vibe. Everyone is minding their own business, but at the same time very friendly and helpful if you need something. I wouldn’t mind living in Canggu for some time longer.
On one of the weekend days, Sven and I took a surfing lesson at Perencak beach. I’ve had a surfing lesson back home, but in general the sea in Bali is a lot rougher than in the Netherlands. So this was quite a different experience. After an hour Sven and I both had some successful waves rides (but still pretty much near the shore and just standing up and going straight towards the beach). We were about to go for a second time, but arriving at the beach found a sea that was at least twice as rough compare to when we had our surfing lesson. So we wisely backed out and watched the pros do their work that day. We’re planning to go surfing again when we come back in Canggu later this week
For our working days we found a nice cafe/coworking place, District Canggu. A basic working space with good internet and a nice view on some rice terraces. It provided us with all we needed to do our jobs.
Sneak peaked Ubud
With Canggu as base, we decided to take the scooter to check out Ubud. Ubud is a town located among the rice paddies in the inlands of Bali. Where Monkey Forest is one of the highlights you can’t miss. We didn’t visit Monkey Forest yet, but passed by it. Enough to catch a glimpse of some monkeys crossing the streets.
One of the monkeys freely living in and around Monkey Forest We also visited the Tegenungan waterfall surrounded by the green wilderness.
We’re staying in Ubud until Thursday this week and will explore the area in the coming days. Our first impression of Ubud is positive. Nice restaurants all over, streets are quite busy but not as crowded as Kuta.
Weekend trip Nusa Penida
Nusa Penida is a beautiful island near Bali. From several beaches in Bali fast boats take people from and to Nusa Penida. As we came from Ubud, we drove an hour on the scooter to Kusamba beach and took the fast boat (+/-30 mins) to Nusa Penida.
We were told the island would be an amazing experience, although roads would be horrible in some parts, we were advised to rent a scooter. So we did. Yes, some parts of the island had some hellish roads. So if you don’t have too much experience driving a scooter, think twice before attempting to reach the highlights by scooter. But anyway, most of the roads were perfect and crossing the island in and on itself was an amazing experience!
one of the amazing views in Nusa Penida
Broken Beach
Teletubbies hill
Treehouse “Rumah Pohon” viewpoint
Beside all great viewpoints Nusa Penida has to offer, theres also the unique opportunity to go snorkling with Manta Rays. We got up early and left at 7:00AM for the trip. And we had success! It was a magical experience.. The Manta’s of at least 1,5m by 2m seemed to take pleasure in heading straight onto you and just turning away at the last moment. Unfortunately we don’t have any footage ourselves, but to give an idea I’ve included someone else’s YouTube video.
One of the biggest undertakings during our trip to Nusa Penida was climbing the ‘stairs’ to Kelingking Beach. Looked from above Kelingking has a t-rex looking shape. It is possible to descent to the beach by a path made out of wooden sticks and carved out steps. Some parts are really steep and some climbing is required. It’s quite a challenge to do this, so I think 95% of the tourists don’t go down. There were also no boats at all, which made Kelingking Beach a very secluded and quiet place.
Kelingking viewpoint
I’ve included two videos, one of the climb on Kelingking and one of the sea down at the beach. By times the waves certainly got to 3-4 meters of height. Sven and I were both swept away by it multiple times, which was pretty funny.
Sven is returning home on Saturday and Fleur will join me next week on Wednesday. I’m really looking forward to the weeks to come. A lot of things to do here! Thanks for reading, see you all soon!
